Back to Work - the Hectic Life

So I got my first paid job in Zimbabwe - well, first formal contractual work anyway. A 7-day assignment to write a proposal for CARE. I submitted a first draft today, and the work will be all over by the end of this week.

Getting back to work has been on my mind since I stopped working for SC, November 2009. I had decided that I wouldn't start working until after the summer trip home in 2010 - let the family get settled in Zim, find a house, help the kids transition, etc.

Then I got involved in the Parent Teacher Organization which is really just me and this other lady and an enormous agenda. I told myself: this volunteer work was my chance to put into practice what I'd been preaching all those years as a community organizer and aid worker devoted to improving education through increased parental involvement, blah, blah.

Still, I know about myself that I am most content when I am employed. I get a lot of satisfaction from work - the productivity of it, the my-world aspect, the legitimacy, the title-identity, the cash that I earn, the daily creative process, the high heeled outfits, the connection to the "real" world, the travel, the relationships with colleagues, the intellectual growth, the focused attention on projects, the perks...

But I really don't like taking work home or working long hours. So, a certain kind of part-time work - that is just challenging enough to keep me interested but not so challenging that it requires 100% of my attention - is ideal.

That's why writing proposals is not ideal. There are so many reasons why I should write proposals, one of which is that I could always find work. But it is exactly that 110%, keep working in the evening type of work that becomes more pain than pleasure.

Not that I'm complaining! If anything, this crazy, hectic week has convinced me that I really should make more of an effort to find a job. A regular, part-time job. That's extremely flexible. And allows a 2-month holiday in the summer.

Then there's the First Annual Harare International School Golf Tournament, Friday, 25 Feb. Buy your tickets now! Secure your tee-off times!


25 teams of 4. Rolling tee-off times starting at 11:30 a.m. 20+ sponsors - one for every hole, plus gifts and prizes. There's lunch on the green and "gin tents" and an award ceremony and a dinner and a band and dancing.


As usual, I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I suggested we do this. Me and Tendayi, the PTO. (Granted, the chair of the event is really Binta. But she had to go out of town. Twice. Last week and this week.) Luckily Tendayi is one of those extremely productive, well-connected people who makes things happen.


But it's all a grand experiment really. Have a bunch of people invest a lot of money in something and just hope you can pull it off to their satisfaction. It's for a good cause.

Cloud 9

David's old friend from high school - an exchange student from England named Stewart - was coming to Lebanon for a holiday, and we convinced him to pop over to Jordan for a couple of days with his wife Raina. Both of them make films for a living, and Stewart works full time now as a film producer for Save the Children UK. Their visit just happened to coincide with the first day of the youth training for documentary film-making, so Stu and Raina came. Stu showed some of his work and answered questions from the participants. Stu and Raina were really inspirational, and they were impressed with Mohammad Hushki, the director/trainer. I was on cloud 9 seeing everything come together. These 20-somethings are all Iraqi refugees, a few years into their life-on-hold here in Jordan where they can't really work. They can't go back home, and many are waiting to be re-located to a third country. So here they are learning from pros about film-making: producing, sound, lighting, camera use... Yesterday they were already putting up sets around the office and practice interviewing people. Next week, we're heading out to capture the story of a friend of one of the kids, a 16-year-old who lives and works at a plastics factory and supports his family who are stuck in Syria.

Having an idea, finding support, coordinating with various people, and then being there to actually see it happen...all within a few months...it's so much more exciting than sitting behind a desk writing reports :)

Some major events

Last month, David and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary which felt just as momentous as Miles's 5th birthday. (That sounds odd. They were momentous in their own ways.) I know I'm getting old, but there's still a short list of things that have lasted in my life for 5 solid years. Next year will mark 10 years that David and I have been together(!). We had a busy weekend, but the surprise night out together was back to the bathhouse for the coed hours.

Then there's the going back to work. I'm happy to be back with SC, this time as a consultant for the action learning component of the World Bank funded regional education initiative in Lebanon and Jordan that includes various programs from building and fully furnishing kindergartens to child-led activism projects that demand less violence in schools to uniforms and schools supplies, to parenting classes and teacher training on everything. And lots more. It's huge. The money comes from aid to displaced Iraqis but reaches even more Jordanian kids. I'm coordinating the collection of key lessons learned from all these programs to present them to a larger audience and hopefully influence regional policies and future directions of funding. I'm out in December, so we're planning on a first draft package by October and a mini-conference in November.

That's the other big news that most everyone knows now but that we haven't officially announced: our move to Harare, Zimbabwe in December. We are planning to move into the existing country director's house which is lovely, but we will need to furnish it, something we haven't had to do as a family abroad yet. I kind of insisted. The house is great, and I'm looking forward to having more control over how our house feels and looks, but it is going to be an investment on all fronts. Ah, the logistics of moving. If only I'd had my job the last six months and were off these months to prepare for the big move!

Next in the news is our trip to the States in less than three weeks. It looks packed and wild and crazy, but there are 5 or so days blocked off for the beach and another 5 or so days in the mountains, all catch up time with the family. This should have been a longer trip home, but alas --it coincides with my being newly employed, and the kids will need to get back to school. Do I sound stressed? Perhaps I should do my next blog while on the beach.

Ghanem Jabar Hatiyah

A former Iraqi soldier and father of two young children, Ghanem has never before held a puppet but is still an instant success at the Irbid Kindergarten’s Community Learning Through Play Day. Surrounded by young children rapt by the performance, Ghanem is clearly enjoying himself, too. As a volunteer in Save the Children’s Khatawat program, Ghanem is not only helping children in need, but he has found an opportunity for personal growth and fulfillment.

At first appearance, Ghanem seems an unlikely candidate for volunteering to help little children. He’s a big man with a deep voice, a weathered face and hands rough from hard work. But his smile lights up with a youthful excitement when he describes the impact his involvement in Khatawat has had on his life.

“Although I am 45-years-old, I never before felt like this, like I have a role in life. Now I have more energy and a curiosity to learn and develop myself.”

Ghanem grew up poor in Iraq. He dreamed of going to university, but life was too hard. After high school, he joined the army to support his family, and five years later he was seriously wounded in the Iran-Iraq war. Without any help from the government, Ghanem struggled to recover and make a life for himself. He spent years as a migrant worker going back and forth between Iraq and Jordan until he married Maysoun, a Jordanian woman. They settled in Irbid, Jordan where he now owns a small shop and volunteers for Save the Children’s early childhood education program, Khatawat.

“I always wanted to find a way to help others, but never before did I have such an opportunity as Khatawat. I had never heard of child protection before. I suffered a lot as a child, and it makes me feel good to make children happy so they will not hurt like I did.”

A war zone is no place for children, as any Iraqi parent who fled to Jordan can tell you. The negative effects of social instability and violence on children are numerous. Their cognitive, emotional, social and physical development are all at risk when they are denied a safe environment in which to learn and play.

In the Khatawat program, Save the Children helps vulnerable families, both Iraqi and Jordanian, by providing tuition for their four and five-year-olds to attend safe community kindergartens where they receive a quality early childhood education.

Save the Children’s Khatawat program package includes major renovations to the school and playground, a complete set of classroom furniture and learning equipment, toys and art materials for the children, training and on-going guidance for teachers, and support for community, parent and volunteer activities directed toward strengthening the social network that cares for children.

With regular training and coordination support from Save the Children, Ghanem has visited the homes of families with young, out-of-school children to explain the benefits of the Khatawat program and help them enroll their children. He earned their trust by being present at every stage: on registration day, at the parents’ orientation, and on the bus with the children on the first days of school. He also participated with them in a Save the Children psychosocial workshop aimed at helping parents cope with raising children in a stressful situation.

In the first year of the program, more than 100 children in Irbid will have access to kindergarten due to the recruitment work of Ghanem and other volunteers, and even more children will benefit from activities like the Community Learning Through Play Day. On the day of this interview, one hundred and fifty children and their parents spent the day at the school planting flowers, painting, eating together and participating in fun activities that taught kids and their parents about traditional Iraqi music, oral hygiene and traffic safety. Ghanem entertained the children with puppets that another volunteer had made for the event. 

Before he joined Khatawat, Ghanem was shy and lacking in self-confidence. 

“I wanted to be alone most of his time. But being a volunteer has built my confidence. I feel more human, like I have value.”

Ghanem wants more for his children, as any parent does, and through this program he found a way to support their growth, as well as his own. 

“We are grateful because this program has given our children a chance to be happy. Save the Children provides a safe place for them to play and learn. It is much more than we even imagined for our children.” 

where nighttime entertainment meets daytime drama

Last night I watched Generation Kill, the first episode. I'm always up for a really good series. And I do feel like I need to watch more films about Iraq, from every perspective. 

The cultural divide between me and the soldiers was grand canyon-like. They are marines trained to kill. There's a lot of testosterone and some talk about the supremacy of the white man.

Meanwhile, I spent the day writing up interviews I'd had with some Iraqis. I got teary-eyed at my desk as I wrote about a an ex-soldier wounded in the Iran-Iraq War who did a puppet show for the Iraqi children at a kindergarten we support. He was this deep-voiced guy with meat hooks for hands. He told me later he'd never held a puppet before in his life. "It gave me great pleasure to make the children happy since I had such a sad childhood myself."

It's going to be a tough on the outside, healing child on the inside kind of story. Corny? You had to meet the guy.

So in the last scene of the GKill episode, these marine kids come across some defecting Iraqi soldiers trudging through the desert, and they treat them badly--pour out their meager ration of water, steal from them, force them to the ground, mock them...

I felt like I was watching invaders attacking my neighbors. It was extremely offensive. The Iraqis were more familiar to me. 

Yet the kids were familiar to me, obviously. They're Americans for god's sake. 

I know TV is not reality. But dehumanization and cruelty to others is apparently a natural ingredient of war, no matter the justification. 

It made me feel naive in my little aid-worker bubble.

People sometimes wonder how I can bring my children into such a dangerous part of the world. But my world, the people we know and hang with, the expats and internationally-minded nationals, are of the same peace-loving, diversity-celebrating mindset that we are. We're all globe-huggin humanitarians.